Snow Job

[jfrawley]

Here's hoping all our friends in the upper midwest are OK after all the snow. This is Lake Shore Drive in Chicago this morning,

[mdrburchette]

Are there people in those cars? Did they just park on the road or are they stranded? Scary pic!

[TulsaSpider]

They actually had this on the news. They had to rescue people with snowmobiles. many people where stranded for several hours. This was a first even for Chi town. I will be trapped in my house in Tulsa until we get a thaw, prolly till Sunday. 4 foot drifts here, broke every record we have, not good! Where's my Tauntaun?

[mdrburchette]

It seems strange so many people would be out with the warnings that were most likely issued. If you mention that four letter word around here, the earth stops spinning and everything shuts down.

[kmead]

It was hitting Chicago during the evening rush time, with the snow they had been getting traffic had been slow. It doesn't take much of a snarl to bring many areas to a stop in Chicago. That particular road has limited access and exits along that section so once they were stopped it could just snow ball. So to speak.

It isn't unusual to sit in that area for an hour without bad weather, bad weather makes it that much worse. Not all employers were as forward thinking as to let people out early. In a city that large it can be hard to get everyone where they need to be in a timely manner.

My company declared a shut down for today early yesterday afternoon. It likely really helped as the municipalities have been able to get rid of most of our 12" we gained overnight. The storm didn't really hit us until 7pm EST which would have been 6PM CST, right during Chicago's rush time and they had been getting it a good hour earlier than us on this side of the lake.

That is the section south of Soldier Field which has the lake a short distance from the road:

http://maps.google.com/maps?client=safa ... =en&tab=wl

[courtenay]

Man - it's times like this I'm really glad I live in the Pacific Northwest!!! The snow seems to stay on the ski hills where it belongs. The rain can get to be a bit of a drag - but at least it doesn't have to be plowed or shovelled.

[Zippy]

While we don't get nearly the amount of snow that they do in other parts of the country, we get our fair share of snow in our little corner of the Pacific Northwest. Unfortunately we don't seem to know what to do with it. It seems like our elected officials don't want to spend the money on de-icing or snow removal and it always backfires on them. Our last major storm in December left thousands stranded because they delayed getting the sand trucks out in time. To add insult to injury all the people that ran out of gas and had to abandon their cars were then faced with outrageous towing and storage fees.
I think our biggest problem is the hills. Don't go up or down a hill if it is covered with snow or ice.

Seattle http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsJLVub50Aw
Seattle http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYgW53lxrMQ
Portland http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMzeiMJQrvk

[manoa matt]

They all decided to hunker down in that RV in the foreground. Nah just kidding. I lived in Chicago for 7 years before moving out here. I don't miss that stuff one bit. What did you call it again, snow?

[courtenay]

Feel sorry for you Matt - It must be tough having to deal with all that sand between your toes year 'round eh?

[divace73]

The weather seems to be giving us all a good challenge at present, here in north eastern Australia (QLD) we just had a cat 5 hurricane, In the lower part of QLD, we have just had serious flooding, In Sydney we been having 40 deg C (roughly 100 deg F) days and mid 30's at night.
Fires in Western Australia and Also south in Victoria.

Goes to show, you can't mess with mother nature.......


It would be good is we could swap some of the heat from here to the snow there